The Management of Projects

Introduction

In most sectors, the vast majority of improvement and innovation endeavors are carried out in projects. In that respect, projects are important for driving innovation and firm performance. As a consequence, the ability to manage projects is critical for competitiveness and growth. However, despite the importance of managing project successfully firms today continuously fail to deliver high value projects. This is a problem that more and more managers are becoming increasingly aware of – the ability to generate and implement projects should be of a top management concern. 　

This course will go beyond the standard and straightforward project management approaches but will deal with managing complexities that exist when you work in projects that are constrained in terms of time, budget, people and technologies. The course will address how companies can make better use of organizing activities as projects and the criticality for an increasing number for firms to develop project management as a core competence for single projects and for the portfolio of projects　

Projects differ in two respects: complexity (magnitude of the effort, number of groups and organizations that need to be coordinated, and diversity in skills or expertise needed) and uncertainty (predictability of the final outcome in terms of time, cost and technical performance). Many concepts, models, methods and techniques have been developed and applied to manage projects with respect to the main elements of these dimensions. In addition, most projects need to be managed simultaneously and in connection to each other. 　

The ability to make a sound contribution to project management presupposes in-depth knowledge and understanding of the theoretical and empirical bases of multiple dimensions of project management. In this course, students will be challenged to examine the appropriateness, usefulness and academic status of project management principles and methods that are generally applied in the field of process and product innovation.

Course content

• The current state of research into the management of projects?
• The current state of the practice of the management of projects?
• What are complexities and uncertainties in projects?
• How to unravel project complexities?